Lt. General Harbaksh Singh

Remembering
Lt Gen Harbakhsh Singh By Captain Amarinder Singh

LT Gen Harbakhsh
Singh passed away on November 14. Many don't know who the General was. Being out
of sight for 30 years put him out of mind as well, and
a few words is all that he warranted in sketchy obituaries and those too in
local Punjab papers.

Born in
1913 in Badrukhan in Sangrur and having graduated from
Government College at Lahore, he was commissioned into 5 Sikh in 1935.
He was a graduate of the 1st course at the IMA after a
year's attachment with a British battalion, The
Argyl and Sutherland Highlanders, wherein he saw active service on the
north-west frontier. He commanded a company of 5 Sikh in 1942
in Malaya against the Japanese.
Severely wounded in the head, a steel plate, which he carried to his
last day, was a constant reminder. He was in a military hospital
when General A.E Percival, the Allied field commander, surrendered all Allied
forces in Malaya and Singapore to the Japanese in 1942. Then followed three
years of a miserable existence and near starvation as a Japanese prisoner of war.
Released at the end of the war in 1945, he remained in hospital
for some months with beri-beri and other problems brought on by malnutrition and inhuman
conditions in Japanese POW camps. Posted as second-in-command of 4 Sikh on release from
hospital, he was perhaps the only deputy ever to ride a horse on parade in
an infantry battalion, as he was too weak to march.

We now
come to three episodes in his brilliant
military career which makes him stand out as one of the outstanding
commanders in modern Indian history.
India became independent on August 15, 1947, and Pakistani-backed
regulars, irregulars and tribesmen
crossed into the state of Jammu and Kashmir on October 22. In
spite of a determined effort by the J&K
state forces and by the initially inducted Indiantroops, the
enemy reached the outskirts of Srinagar on November 20 and
the fall of the capital city was imminent. On November 21, reports came in of
a concentration of around 3,000 enemy troops on the outskirts of
Srinagar at Shalateng, just 4 miles from
the city centre, preparing to attack the city. Colonel
Harbakhsh Singh, then second-in-command of the
newly inducted 161 Brigade was given the task of
conducting the battle. He attacked Shalateng on the November 22
with two infantry battalions, 1 Sikh and 1
(Para) Kumaon with a troop of armoured cars of 7 Cavalry and,
in a brilliantly planned and executed operation, routed
the enemy leaving 472 enemy dead on the field. The threat
to Srinagar was now over. If the capital city had fallen, it would
have been one of the greatest disasters in Indian history.

Promoted to
command 163 Brigade, his was one of
the two brigades launched by General Thimmaya, then in command
of Sri Division (later 19 division), on May 17, 1948, to clear
the enemy out of the Jhelum valley, up to Muzaffarabad
and Domel. The first by 161 Brigade under Brigadier L.P Sen on the Jhelum
axis, and the second in a flanking move by his 163 Brigade over the
Nasta Chun Pass to Tithwal and beyond. While 161 Brigade was held up near Uri,
Brigadier Harbakhsh Singh's offensive, as discussed by General Birdwood in
his book, A Continent Decides, was a triumph. "Pakistans situation was now
grim, and had India only used air supply more aggressively to
maintain the impetus of this outflanking success, her
forces would so severely have threatened Muzaffarabad as
to force a Pakistani withdrawal from the whole of the northern sector.
Luckily for Pakistan, they paused". Tithwal fell on May 23. In six days,
Brigadier Harbakhsh Singh had in a lightning move secured all
territory starting from Handwara to the Kishanganga over the Nasta Chun
Pass and Tithwal after fighting aggressive battles.

Finally
after commanding 5 Division and 4 Corps for a while, during the
Chinese operations of 1962, where many soldiers believe that
had he been allowed to command the Corps during the second phase of the
battle by the Chinese which started on November 20, the situation
would have been quite different in NEFA. Sadly for the Corps,
their old GOC, General B.M Kaul, was sent back to command,
from a sick bed in Delhi, by Krishna Menon, the then
Defence Minister. General Harbakhsh Singh was then given
command of 33 Corps at Siliguri and he finally took over as the
Western Army Commander in November 1964.

War clouds
gathered once again in 1965. Pakistan took the offensive in April in Kutch and was
successfully repulsed. In August, Kashmir became the
target and on September 6 India went to war.
The western Army offensive across the Punjab border which started at 4.30 a.m. on September 6 went well
till Pakistan counter attacked 4 Division on the 11
Corps left flank at Khemkaran.The 4 Division
comprising 62 and 7 Brigades, a strength of six
infantry battalions, had not quite recovered from the drubbing it received
in 1962 at the hands of the Chinese, lost two-and-a- half battalions in
a matter of hours, less through enemy action more by desertion, and was
virtually overrun. The situation on the 7th afternoon was grim,
while the Division fell back to the village of Asal Uttar and hurriedly
prepared a defended sector based on the surviving
three-and-a-half battalions and the 2nd (Indp) Armoured Brigade.
On the 9th, Pakistans 1st Armoured Division, whose
existence was not known to us, attacked the Division.
Their operational order was captured by us. The plan
was to attack and overrun the weak 4 Division while a
strong combat group was to cut the lines of
communication of both 4 Division, 7 Division on the
Barki Axis and finally to cut the GT Road at the Beas
Bridge, effectively sealing off 11 Corps HQs and Corps
troops at Raya, and the LOFC of 15 Division in one
sweep. The situation was extremely grim and as a
consequence Delhi panicked.

Having returned to
HQ Western Army at Ambala from
4 Division at midnight on the 9th and after a visit to
the operations room, the Army Commander retired for
three hours rest before leaving at four' clock the
next morning. The instructions to me, his ADC, was
not to awaken him unless it was urgent. At 2.30 a.m.
the Army Chief, General J.N. Chaudhary, called and
spoke to the General and after a heated discussion
centered around the major threat that had developed,
the Chief ordered the Army Commander to withdraw
11 Corps to hold a line on the Beas river. General
Harbakhsh Singh refused to carry out this order. The
next morning, 4 Division stabilised the position and
when the Chief visited command headquarters at
Ambala that afternoon, the 10th, the crisis was over
and the subject was not discussed. Had the General
carried out these orders, not only would have half of
Punjab been under Pakistani occupation but the
morale of the Indian Army would have been rock
bottom, affecting operations in other theatres as
well.

His funeral was on November 15. Very few knew
about it, therefore apart from his friends and
contemporaries, former officers of the Sikh Regiment
of which he had been colonel for over a decade, and
others such as I, who had been on his staff, gathered
at the Delhi cantonment to say our final farewell. The
Army did him proud by giving him a send off befitting
a great soldier. And while the ceremonies were on,
and six Lieutenant Generals removed the National
Flag from the body which was to be cremated, I
couldn't help wondering how fortunate it was for the
country to have had the right man at the right place
at the right time. The words once used to describe
Field Marshal Lord Wavell, seen apt for describing
General Harbakhsh Singh: "He was essentially a
soldier's soldier, and takes an assured place as one of
the great commanders in military history".

The Last Post was
sounded and the pyre lit, and as
the smoke curled its way into the heavens and the
bugle sounded reveille, transporting the General to
Valhalla, to join the ranks of the many great soldiers
who once trod this earth, there were moist eyes all
around. As the mourners said their silent farewells,
the words of Sir Walter-Scott from The Lady of the
Lake came to mind:

Soldier, rest thy warfare is o'er,
Dream of fighting fields no more;
Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.